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Ministers were warned about horsemeat in 2011

A lab assistant prepares a meat sample of lasagna for a DNA test (Bernd Thissen)

MINISTERS were warned more than 18 months ago that illegal horsemeat was getting into the human food chain.

John Young, a former manager with the Food Standards Agency (FSA), says he alerted the government to a potential scandal of illicit horsemeat with drug residues in human food but was ignored.

Young, who until 2008 worked at the Meat Hygiene Service, which was then an executive agency of the FSA, helped draft a letter in April 2011 on behalf of Britain’s biggest horsemeat exporter to Sir Jim Paice, then a minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is handling the current crisis.

The letter from High Peak Meat Exports warned that a horse passport scheme to stop the veterinary drug phenyl- butazone, or bute, getting into the human food chain was a “debacle”, with 75 organisations issuing documents.